1. Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to apparatus for feeding insoles into a molding press and to a method for automatically feeding insoles to a molding press.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known that molding presses for insoles have existed for many years and that many presses has relied upon an operator manually feeding insoles into a molding press. One such molding press in made by Ernst Mohrbach K.G. Maschinenfabrik of West Germany. This type of insole molding machine has been supplied to the shoe manufacturing industry in several embodiments. An early machine required the insoles to be fed manually, a pair at a time, and supplied with an electronic eye to control the molding operation, subject to removal of the operator's hand from the molding area. A more advanced embodiment of a Mohrbach molding machine was equipped to be supplied with or without automatic feeding devices. The automatic feed embodiment incorporated such picking of pairs of insoles from a pile magazine which were then put into the molds. The pile magazines were arranged for left and right insoles, the magazines could be filled up while the machine is operating so that several machines could be operated by one operator simultaneously. When no insoles could be sucked up the machine stopped. An automatic machine had to be fed with a swinging feeder to place the insoles in pairs which would then be molded and ejected. Provision was made to set the machine to the respective insole or shank size by means of an adjusting wheel and scale.
It is further known that a Puma robot has been programmed to simulate automatic feeding of insoles to molding machines of the Mohrbach type. However, in employing the robot for feeding insoles it introduced a problem of not matching the molding machine cycle time, and being significantly slower than manual feeding. Numerous other problems have been encouraged so that a robot type loader of substantially trouble free character had an unacceptable cost factor when compared to having a loading mechanism for placing insole parts in a molding machine under a control system which is able to initiate and monitor all working components.